Author: drcowinj

Center for Learning and Living – book your ticket online

This multi-media lecture examines Carmen, a major opera character, dismissed by contemporary critics as a “prostitute of the gutter,” “wild animal” and “cynical harlot.” Featuring excerpts of performances, we explore several questions: can Carmen be diagnosed as a Malignant Narcissist or is she the early embodiment of the modern, sexually emancipated woman? Is her lover Don José what psychologists call “narcissistic food”? Is she an appealing predator or a victim? Does the audience experience what Aristotle described as “a purging of the spirit of morbid and base ideas or emotions by witnessing the playing out of such emotions or ideas on stage”?

Thu 2:30-3:45 pm • Sept. 29 • 1 session

Dr. Jasmin B. Cowin holds a Certificate from the Center of Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, lectures widely on psychology and opera as the aural roadway to the unconscious. Fulbright Scholar, University Pathway Facilitator at Education First, on the faculty at Westchester Community College & Teachers College/Columbia University, incoming President, NY Rotary Club No. 6, Host Club of America.

An accepted paper by Jasmin B. Cowin, Ed.D. for the TESOL Conference, November 3rd and 4th, 2016 in Syracuse, New York. I am embarking on a journey of discovery with critical questions in my mind: …

Source: “The Phoenix Firestorm Project: Virtual Worlds, JokaydiaGrid and Second Life” Teaching ESL in OpenSym Grids

The last few weeks I spend taking care of my mother, traveling on occasion and exploring virtual worlds and their possibilities in the teaching profession. The goal of the course was to expose us, a group of students at Marlboro College for Graduate and Professional Studies to the relevance of virtual worlds for real-world learning environments.

I would love to say that I aced this course, that it came naturally, that I felt “like a fish in water.”  Nope, this idealized view of myself never materialized.  Instead, I learned how to be humble, ask for help, call 13-year olds on Skype in the US to get lessons on Minecraft mining, called a neighbor’s son to reconfigure my mother’s antiquated router system, and watched hours upon hours of youtube tutorials.

In addition, I WhatsApped my son in Japan to go through the finer points in mining, creating gold, creating signs, power boosts and cry about a dog who drowned in Minecraft. Our mother-son relationship benefitted greatly from this reversed dynamic. Before the course, I saw absolutely no use for his time on the computer watching endless “weird” legos move. However,  in his apps and Skype lessons the amount of detail orientation and real-time work which goes into mining, creating every item through combining different materials, and creating complex structures one forth.  For every question, my son had an online tutorial ready to guide me.  He wrote pages of commands and emailed them for me to try.  I got advice from his friends on “super awesome structures” complete with more tutorials via email. More than that, the collective teen posse cautioned me to “keep totally to the letter of the tutorials”.  All this from a group that never takes a book and reads it from front to back, a group which seems completely laisser faire when it comes to spelling, etc.  I had entered an alternate universe where I became the learner who climbed the mountain….

Only after entering the World of Warcraft did I completely realize how deeply connected these kids are through their online gaming.  They quest together, they form complex teams with characters completing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, they problem solve, read and analyze detailed notecards. Before this course, these were realms I had no access to. Now, I understand the process, time commitment, and mindset much better.

There are definitely uses for Minecraft, SL, WoW in the teaching profession.  However, the great challenge is for teachers to first master these realms and then fold this mastery into required subject activities which guide students not only within a virtual world but extend those activities into the real world.

Dr. J’s Thoughts on: GAME-LIKE LEARNING: AN EXAMPLE OF SITUATED LEARNING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN James Paul Gee University of Wisconsin-Madison  PDF of JP Gee paper Sometime…

Source: Game-like Learning and hidden Ideologies

Dr. J’s Thoughts on:

GAME-LIKE LEARNING: AN EXAMPLE OF SITUATED LEARNING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN James Paul Gee University of Wisconsin-Madison

 PDF of JP Gee paper

Sometimes we are struck by specific  insights triggered through our reading.  My personal trigger in JP Gee’s paper was: “What all these games exemplify, though, is that there is no real learning without some ideology. Adopting a certain set of values and a particular world view is intimately connected to doing the activities and having the experiences that constitute any specific domain of knowledge. “

I never really thought or analyzed this aspect of video gaming and virtual world
environments. However, as I have a teen, I know about my strong reactions to ongoing gaming endeavors. Games such as Minecraft and Clash of Clans while time-consuming did not seem inherently dangerous. However, the line was drawn and defended when a game simulating a Casino environment became of interest. This game not only requires the buying of gems in real currency but also encourages a Las Vegas type mindset. While I could not put my finger on the strong negative reaction of mine, this article cleared it up. Indeed, this game requires the gamer to embrace a certain type of ideology which I consider extremely dangerous. I see it as a training ground to desensitize the approach to life gaming in a casino.

Generally, the idea of inherent ideology nestled in a game is something worth exploring as this opens unconscious doors within the ID and Ego not accessible to teachers in a classroom. Latent character flaws and strengths could be activated. As such, I will call this for a lack of better words “unguided manipulation” which can and does have far reaching consequences not only in school but real life.

Joshua Smyth, associate professor of psychology in The College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University, recently conducted a randomized trial study of college students contrasting the effects of playing online socially interconnected video games with more traditional single-player or arcade-style games.

While both multiplayer and traditional single player video games present a double-edged sword, Smyth’s research found that online, socially integrated multiplayer games create greater negative consequences (decreased health, well-being, sleep, socialization and academic work) but also garner far greater positive results (greater enjoyment in playing, increased interest in continuing play and a rise in the acquisition of new friendships) than do single-player games.

All students taking part in the study reported decreased health and sleep and interference with real-life socializing and academic work. In contrast to these costs, participants experienced benefits, most notably by those taking part in online multiplayer game play. Online multiplayer gamers enjoyed their play far more than those assigned to more traditional game types, creating new friendships in their online environments.

The greater question is that of hidden manifestations of value and ideology manipulation be it “good or bad”. With online time commitments outpacing real life experiences the door is wide open to idealogical manipulation.  While I am not paranoid about a “great conspiracy”, I do believe that a highjacking of values is inherently possible in virtual worlds.  When thinking about a counterpart in the literary world I was reminded  of “The Giver” by Lois Lowry where society in its quest for total harmony eventually forgoes all their memories to achieve perfect harmony though perfect assimilation.

“We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

by Dr. Jasmin Bey Cowin – Virtual World Explorer

Better late than never!  After watching my son battle giants, slay dragons, and built complete societies, I decided to become cool too.  To achieve that highly desired “cool mom” status I enrolled in a course at Marlboro College for Graduate and Professional Studies and am taking an online course in Games and Simulations. I am currently pursuing a Certificate in Educational Technology at Marlboro College.

I shall be writing about my adventures in JokaydiaGRID, which is an OpenSim grid for education. Click me to go to Jokaydiagrid and enter an educational world.  So far, I have created an Avatar in Jokaydia and joined Second Life, a 3D virtual world created by its users.Signing up for JokaydiaGRID will take a couple of days as one gets vetted.  How I don’t know!

However, before I could enter any world I had to get acquainted more closely with my computer operating system and install Firestorm an OpenSim viewer which is a software program developed by the Phoenix Viewer Project. There are many Open Simulators but this was the one recommended by my teachers – or should I say Virtual World guru guides?

Was the signing up easy, painless and hassle free?  No, it was filled with vexing problems, online tutorials and sad emails such as Which buttons do I press? Why does it not load? Or even:  Where am I?  I will explore the finer points of In World experiences my next blog.

I shall let you know through updates where my travels have taken me, which worlds I discovered or created and the fabulous failures which surely will happen.

Visit my blog often!